As Part of the Doors exhibition of Klasse Raphaela Vogel/Alexandra Bircken, AdbK München

By connecting a vibrating speaker, a microphone, and a liquid, spoken words become visible in the form of sound waves.

Let your thoughts and emotions flow freely and fully immerse yourself in the visualization of your own voice.

Part of the Happy End Hotel Group Exhibition by Art Collective Broke Today.

With this exhibition, I want to encourage deeper reflection on our consumption behavior. The central piece, Consumption Imprint (2024), was specially conceived for this exhibition and consists of 216 puzzle-like concrete blocks. Each block can be purchased for €10 during the exhibition, causing the artwork to gradually disassemble over time. Each block on its own has no real function but is an isolated fragment that only becomes part of the complete artwork when connected with the others. Upon purchasing a block, the buyer receives the contact details of the owners of the adjacent puzzle pieces. It is then up to the buyers to take action if they want to reunite the complete artwork.

For me, this call to connect reflects the isolated nature of consumerism in our society, where things are often acquired without any real purpose. On platforms like Amazon and others, purchases are made impulsively with a click, without considering the deeper value. Similarly, artworks in the traditional art market often behave in the same way: they disappear into private collections after auctions and become inaccessible to the public.

I aim to highlight the ambivalence of consumption. The blocks are affordable, easy to maintain, and simple to store – they resemble typical consumer goods. Yet, unlike a traditional art purchase, their completion only becomes apparent through collective action. It is up to the consumers to give their impulsive purchases deeper meaning and, together, challenge the unreflective consumer behavior of our time.

In addition, the exhibition presents four works from the Restrained series (2023–2024) and the Melting Point series (2023), both of which abstractly explore the relationship between humans and nature, incorporating frequently consumed materials in the context of our consumption behavior.

Now it’s up to you: Will you continue to just consume – or give your consumption deeper meaning?

As part of the anual Rundgang, a group exhibition held by all free art classes at the university.

The brain is the most complex human organ. More than 100,000,000,000,000 synapses work together in a perfect harmonious way to control every action of your body from your heartbeat over your speech to you spreading jam on a piece of toast.

But what happens when your brain stops working the way you want it to?

Acute trauma causes the brain to go into some sort of panic mode, known as ‘fight, flee, freeze’ or ‘panic attack’. Whilst doing so, the assigning function of the hippocampus sets out which leads the amygdala to evolve memories to have their own life. These memories can be triggered by sounds, smells, feelings or pictures and, once triggered, cause trauma to reoccur. This reoccurrence will set off unconscious defense mechanisms (reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, denial, etc.) which will intervene in order to keep the trauma repressed from reaching the conscious mind. If these mechanisms fail trauma will haunt the conscious mind, most commonly in form of a panic attack.

Being in a state differing in mental or neurological function from what is considered typical or normal is called “neurodivergent”. This word is used for all sorts of people whose brain differences affect how their brain works, from learning disabilities to autism and Tourette. A lot of these “differences” stem from trauma, often early childhood trauma. Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud localizes trauma in the subconscious. As a result of sexual actions and abuse in the early age the human mind develops trauma which can be raised into the preconscious by adult sexual encounters. There it will most likely be suppressed by one of Freuds nine defense mechanisms in order to keep said trauma out of the conscious part of the mind.

In this exhibition I try to visualize the complexity of the human brain and explore the anchoring of trauma in this systemic construct.

The structure of the human cerebrum with its five main areas, the frontal lobe; parietal lobe; temporal lobe; occipital lobe and cerebellum, and its 52 cortical fields (Brodmann-Areas, segments of the brains grey matter) are visualized by the five walls, each carrying 52 nails as anchor points. These anchor points are connected by one red string which metaphorically stands for the hundred trillions of synapses that connect the different areas of our brain.

A total of 9 undressed mannequins are placed inside the grid of the red string in a random manner and disrupt the connections of the visualized cortical fields. The mannequins represent naked human bodies, here used as a symbol for sexual violence, block our brains synapses and therefore hinder its ability to work to its full potential. The use of the mannequins as a symbol for sexual violence stems from Freuds, outdated but still relevant, theories about the origin of trauma being set in sexual abuse during early childhood. Just like the amount of Freuds coping mechanisms there is a total of nine mannequins.

Behind and around the viewer there is a total of 81 black and white images (nine different pictures, each one printed nine times), self-portraits which show parts of my nude body in a blurred and distorted manner. These pictures strengthen the unpleasant visualization of sexual violence by leaving the viewer no other choice but to look at a distorted nude body.

Flickering light, also known as strobe, further impedes our ability to see the structure in its entirety and makes the naked bodies of the mannequins appear and disappear in the rhythm of a human heartbeat during a panic attack (150-190 bpm), visualizing the battle of the preconscious memories with our unconscious defense mechanisms.

The goal of this exhibition is to give the viewer an insight on the phoneme of neurodiversity as well as an understanding of a possible cause of trauma and its effect on people who suffer under it. The exhibition tries to trigger inner emotions which appear within the moments just before a trauma induced panic attack occurs in a controlled environment. The, through nails and strings, metaphorically visualized human brain sets the scene for the viewer. Whilst looking at the installation slightly flashing at approximately 160 beats per minute the viewer will be able observe shadows forming in many different locations over the entire installation space and distinguish impressions of naked bodies through the mannequins and pictures. Elevated heart rate due to the strobe and quick visual triggers of a sexual manner lead to a sense of over-stimulation and malaise. When further looking into the exhibition as well as reading or listening to the given explanation of the work this discomfort will fade into a state of understanding.

As part of the La Selleta Group exhibition aimed to highlight artistic talents of the Selletas artistic community over the past fifty years. 

As part of the annual group exhibition by participants of the International Munich Art Lab.